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Perspectives on Asia: is China kitsch?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2020

Alberto Castelli Open the ORCID record for Alberto Castelli [Opens in a new window]
Alberto Castelli*
Affiliation:
Hainan University, Haikou, 570288, China
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Due to the introduction of the market economy, in the past four decades China has switched from being a “planned country” – planned economy, planned art – into a domestic version of cultural pluralism. Consumerism has refilled the vacuum left by the retreat of Maoist ideology. However, the overwhelming success of mass culture is sided by the progressive marginalization of the intellectuals or elite, featuring a culture that is kitsch in its ideological twist. In China, present-day cultural constructions provide a forum of debate for the identity of the whole nation, no more traditional, and not yet modern. In other words, consumerism and commercialism, triggered by products of market economy, have generated a cultural consumption of redundant bad taste. Kitsch indeed.1

Keywords

Avant-gardekitschMaoismpostmodernismsimulacra
Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , January 2021 , pp. 87 - 102
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

1

Since banks and means of production, meaning land and industry, belong to the state, one objection that I often receive on the topic is that China is not a market economy. I will not address, in this paper, the discussion on the market economy in China for it is too far from my line of research, which is essentially sociological. In addition, on the matter, it has been written for nearly 40 years. “Socialism with Chinese characteristic” remains an ambiguous expression representing the Chinese model, which is loyalty to the one-Party rule and market-oriented economy. It is a fact that today foreign trade contributes contribute to roughly 70% of China's GDP, while the total asset of the five state-owned banks accounts for some-more than 30 percent of all banking financial institutions. To some extent, the very same Deng Xiaoping gave the best answer on the subject during his quasi-imperial tour in Southern China (1992): “Planning and market forces are not the essential difference between socialism and capitalism. A planned economy is not the definition of socialism, because there is planning under capitalism; the market economy happens under socialism, too. Planning and market forces are both ways of controlling economic activity.” Market economy is perhaps an improper definition, and yet since 2001 China is a member of the WTO. We should accept the fact that China is in a primary stage of socialism and capitalism as well; due to the relatively low level of material wealth and the high number of the rural population, “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” is a fitting narrative to describe the ideological liaison between socialism and capitalism.

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